Crisis Counsel

Will the subprime lending meltdown and credit crunch send us into a financial free fall? We asked the sharpest minds in business to share their reactions to the downturn, and their insights on the road ahead.

Jim Rogers
Market corrections are coming.
Jim Rogers
Founder of the Rogers Raw Materials Index

We've had the worst bubble in credit we've ever had in American history. As the bubble got bigger and bigger, it spread to emerging markets and leveraged buyouts and all sorts of things. And it hasn't been cleaned out yet. I don't think you can have a bubble like this and clean it out in six months or even a year. It has always taken longer.

Look at homebuilders, for instance. Historically, when an industry goes through a retrenchment like this, you have two or three big companies going bankrupt and most of the companies in the industry losing money for a year or two or three. Well, we haven't gotten anywhere near that in the homebuilding business, so I think that bottom is a long way off. As far as the credit bubble, we have another several months, if not more, of mortgages that are going to reset and people who are going to find themselves with even higher monthly payments. There are many, many more losses to come, most of which we won't know about for weeks or months.

Normally you have markets go down 10% or so every couple of years. We haven't had a 10% correction in the stock market in nearly five years. I don't know if this is the beginning of it, but we've got a lot of corrections coming. It wouldn't surprise me to see a little bounce--say if a central bank cuts rates. But that will just lead to the markets falling further late this year or next year. It would be better for the market, it would be better for investors, and it would be better for the world if we went ahead and cleaned out the system. If they do cut rates in the U.S., it would be pure madness. Because the market's down 7% or 8% from an all-time high? My gosh, what's that going to say about the dollar? What's that going to say to foreign creditors? What's that going to say about inflation? The Federal Reserve was not founded to bail out Bear Stearns or a few hedge funds. It was founded to keep a stable currency and maintain its value.

I have been and continue to be short the investment banks and the commercial banks. If they bounce up, I'll probably short more. I'm certainly not buying anything. The market's only down 8%. I don't consider that a buying opportunity. The things that I'm short, some people probably think are buying opportunities, but I don't. I've been short the banks for close to a year, and for a while it was not fun. But I added to my positions, and now it's a lot of fun.

Warren Buffett

Wilbur Ross

Henry M. Paulson

John Mack

Bill Miller

Robert Shiller

Jim Rogers

Jim Chanos

Stephen S. Roach

Amy Brinkley

Laura Tyson

Jeremy Grantham

Ben Stein
When Wall Street fails, it asks for a handout. Fortune's Allan Sloan says there must be a better way. (more)
But the Treasury Secretary tells Fortune Magazine's Nina Easton that the economy is strong enough to withstand the volatility. (more)

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.